Our Latest Writings (Page 2)

As we were driving to Lola’s our goal was to shoot another quick surf video, but upon arrival, the swell was MASSIVE so the kids decided to boogey board, play in the sand and enjoy a relaxing afternoon instead. This is a quick snapshot of that afternoon at Avellanas.Keep Reading!

We’ve been back in Tamarindo for about a month now and it’s been quite a whirlwind thus far! Things are finally slowing down just a little bit, so I thought I’d drop a quick update. We had two weeks of visitors as well as three weeks of very good friends in town, so we’ve beneKeep Reading!

My alarm went off at 2 in the morning last Friday and it was go time. Time for Rindo and I to travel to Costa Rica together. Rindo and I were scheduled to leave at 6 am on a flight to Dallas and then catch a quick connecting flight to Liberia, Costa Rica. We wouldKeep Reading!

As I mentioned in Part One of this series about bringing a dog to Costa Rica, it was a process to get ready to bring our dog, Rindo, to Costa Rica. Now that airline tickets have been purchased and reserved, it was time to get down to the technical details of the journey. When weKeep Reading!

This weekend we will journey down to Costa Rica again as a family. By this time we’ve got traveling to and from Costa Rica down to a science. Instead of making this 5th trip down the easiest one yet, we’ve decided to make it the most complicated one by adding our new dog to theKeep Reading!

It’s been quite a while since we’ve posted anything about SNOW on this site. We’ve been very grateful to have spent two weekends this Winter in the Colorado mountains, it’s been a long time since we’ve skied and played in the snow. Our first trip was to Keystone, and while it was amazing, we didKeep Reading!

The kids went to an amazing school while living in Costa Rica for the Spring Semester of 2013 called the TIDE Academy (website | facebook). As a part of their community outreach program, the school teamed up with another local school to create a beautiful mural on an old concrete wall in the center ofKeep Reading!

It’s been about 6 months since we left Costa Rica this year and I’m finally getting around to sifting through some of the video footage we took. This was one of my favorite evenings in Costa Rica this spring, the Villa Real Rodeo. Rodeo season is an amazing time around Costa Rica, these rodeos travelKeep Reading!

This is a repost from the TIDE Academy May Newsletter: Congratulations to the Sampsons for being the Featured Students of the Month! TIDE was lucky enough to have the Sampsons for four months this year. Ben, Jacob, and Abby all came prepared to learn everyday, always thought of amazing new ideas, and were awesome surfers!Keep Reading!

I think we may have found true paradise. I’ve seen versions of paradise in a number of places, each location with it’s own unique sparkle. But only a few times before have I been so awe inspired, so moved by natural beauty and simplicity that I was literally speechless. I’m in one of those placesKeep Reading!

Traveling around Costa Rica and Panama for 30 days was an incredible experience and each one of us has our favorite places, memories and experiences of the journey. Some of our favorites are the same, some are different, but in the end we each have that particular “moment” we’ll never forget. For Ben, that “moment”Keep Reading!

Since Bocas Del Toro is a collection of 9 unique islands, there are many beaches to visit.One of these popular “must see” beaches is nicknamed Starfish beach. Walking around Bocas Town, there are a lot of water taxi drivers vying for your business and eager to take you anywhere you want to go. Starfish BeachKeep Reading!

Bocas Del Toro is centered around the water and therefore water activities are abundant. On our third day in Bocas, we decided to take a catamaran trip with Bocas Sailing and see some of the other islands of Bocas Del Toro. The trip included two stops with opportunities to swim and snorkel. One of theKeep Reading!

By the time we woke up on our second full day in Bocas del Toro, the kids had not surfed in over a week and they were really excited to surf again, so we decided to scratch that itch for them and take them surfing in Bocas. Bocas Town itself does not have any surfingKeep Reading!

When we arrived in Panama I grabbed a Panamanian paper called “The Visitor” and read a great little article written by a guy named Jack. The article was called, “Tourists or travelers,” by Jack. While I’m not going to post or repeat the article here, he made some interesting and worthy distinctions between the two,Keep Reading!

On our first full day in Bocas del Toro, we had no plans, in fact we had no plans for our entire week in Bocas, so we stopped by a few different places to get advice. The surf shop, the dive shop, a few restaurants and a tourist / real estate office told us thatKeep Reading!

While living in Costa Rica, we have to renew our visas every 90 days (sometimes shorter depending on the Customs Agent we get). Last year we ventured north to Nicaragua for a few days and this year we decided to head south and visit Panama. The islands on the northwest side of Panama called Bocas DelKeep Reading!

4:30 a.m. is never an easy wake up, but our destination in Panama was well worth it. We had a great couple of days in San Jose, but were happy to return to the beach and ocean breezes – this time on the Caribbean side of Panama. Our flight from San Jose was 50 minutes,Keep Reading!

Our final day in San Jose, we decided to do a coffee plantation tour. Many of our friends had suggested going on the Britt tour (the largest of the Costa Rican Coffee sellers), but every person we spoke with in San Jose would huff about that tour and they all suggested doing the Three GenerationsKeep Reading!

Yesterday we ventured into the capital city of San Jose for the first time. We hailed a cab, and Nelson, our driver, took us all over San Jose to see the sites from the road on our way to our final destination, the Children’s Museum. I’m glad we took as cab, as the museum isKeep Reading!